Wednesday, April 25, 2012

White Dwarf Wednesday #13

Wow.  I am not doing so well on this one am I. I missed last week and didn't catch it till almost Saturday.
So we move on to Issue 13.
For starters the Editorial page has gotten a facelift. In it Ian Livingstone wants to know about your gaming group to start building a list of contacts.

In what is the big feature of this issue are the new AD&D Combat Tables. 4 tables that will be in new PHB.
The Fiend Factory is back with some faves like Doombat and Shadow Demon.  We also get the Imps, which look like they were changed into the mephits.  Don't have my Fiend Folio handy to be sure, but they look the same.

We some additions to the Traveler rules.  Part 1 includes Skills and their uses as Poisons and chemical warfare.
Open Box hits another high point with reviews of B1 In Search of the Unknown and S1 Tomb of Horrors. Don Turnbull gives them 9 and 10 respectively.   Equally as impressive is the 9-point review given to Games Workshop Dungeon Floor Plans.

The issue keeps on giving with Brian Asbury's Houri character class. This class has become a bit infamous in the last few years. I have even posted about it in a past, here and here.

More from the Valley of the Four Winds.
Some new spells. Most are good, though I dislike "Laser", not really a fantasy type spell.  
Some more letters.  Most are about the monsters in FF.  First a letter about how the monsters are already going downhill in quality.  Interestingly one of the letters is from Don Turnbull himself about how Monster Mark is dead with the advent of the new AD&D system.
Some news and some ads.

Quite a bit of quality work in this episode.  While the amount of content hasn't changed (just yet) the quality is up.  Despite the letters, I still think the monsters of FF are still good.

2 comments:

Sean McLachlan said...

Hello from a fellow A to Z Grognard! I never saw much WD back in the day. It never seemed to be available where I lived. I loved the Dragon until it declined after #80 or so, and I contributed to Alarums & Excursions for a time. Also read some of the other zines, especially the Judges Guild stuff. Ah, the memories!

Sean McLachlan said...

Hello from a fellow A to Z Grognard! I never saw much WD back in the day. It never seemed to be available where I lived. I loved the Dragon until it declined after #80 or so, and I contributed to Alarums & Excursions for a time. Also read some of the other zines, especially the Judges Guild stuff. Ah, the memories!